A Cure for Writer’s Block

Perhaps some of you have noticed that I haven’t posted a blog in quite some time. There is a reason for it. I’ve been in the throws of moving out of a house I’ve lived in for thirty-six years. Thirty-six years! Can you just imagine how much junk one can collect and hord in all that time? Enough junk to make seventeen trips to the Goodwill Industries and enough junk, (or should I call it “waste”?) to fill to overflowing seven garbage containers, that needed to be picked up over a seven week period of time.

Lucky for me, quite a lot of my possessions were taken by my children. I am so happy about that. I feel like I haven’t lost them altogether; I will be able to see them when I visit their homes in the future.

And then there are all the other items which are being sold at an “estate sale” as I’m writing this blog. Now, don’t think these are priceless antiques we are talking about. These are left over beds, chairs, tables, kitchenware, lamps, couches, etc. etc. that are simply “used furniture.” I just need to get them out of the house for whatever tenants will be moving in to rent the place.

What has all this got to do with writer’s block, you may ask? Well, being the pack rat that I am, I have stored pieces in my closets and drawers from the year one. They are items that have been given to me by people whom I’ve known and liked and loved over the years. Each time I pick up a vase, or a platter, or a perfume bottle, or a picture frame, I remeber the person who gave it to me and I get that warm feeling about that person. And I know intimately the entire story about that person that makes him or her interesting. It is food for a short story or an essay. Perhaps even a novel.

I picked up a perfume bottle from my vanity. It was given to me by one of my best friends. I recall her first love, her first husband, her three chidren who were my kids best friends, her divorce, her single years, her struggle to make ends meet, and the man who became her second husband.

I picked up a porcelain Cocker Spaniel figurine made by the famous German potter, Rosenthal. It was sent to me by an early admirer in an effort to push me into a relationship in which he was far more serious than I. The ying-yang that took place between us would make for interesting reading.

There are so many more objects in my house that have a story behind them. So, my advice to anyone that is having writer’s block, is to go through their house and find those objects with remarkable stories behind them and write their stories.

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Procrastination or Writer’s Block

I’ve tried to post a new blog about twice a week. It is the way I work. If I don’t give myself deadlines, I just don’t get around to doing much of anything. I book my tennis dates every Tuesday and Thursday. I get out on the court no matter how I feel, or how much else, even more important things, that I have to do. It is not that I don’t like playing tennis; I do. But sometimes I operate on so much overload, that I feel a little guilty about doing something that I actually enjoy, something that I can postpone without anything terrible happening to me.

I have been trying to continue writing my next writing project, which I have actually started and worked out in my mind, but I can’t seem to get beyond the first dozen or so pages. Is it procrastination? Is it writer’s block? Or, perhaps it is overload on other things that I think are more important at the moment?  Actually, I think it is the latter.

Right now I am enjoying the company of my daughter and granddaughter who are visitng from their home in Connecticut. Of course, that is more important to me than saying to them, “Go ahead and watch some TV, or go on a walk, or go shopping … while I crank off a few pages on my writing or post another quick blog. Actually, they are in the shower right now while I do this blog.

The other more important thing in my life right now is that my house is on the market to be sold. It seems that as soon as I sit down to write anything, I get a call from my broker saying, “Can you be out of the house by nine this morning so that I can show your house?” Well, of course he can. Only that involves my flying around like the white tornado to clean it up and strip it of anything laying around junking it up. I have been told  it should look like the work of a developer having his house on display at an “open house.”

There are times when I have an hour ahead of me before anything more important happens in which I can hit the computer for a little writing. But then I look at the keyboard and think about all I have to do,  stressed to the max, having hit that state of affairs that is called  writer’s block. It is impossible to keep from postponing any serious writing … I think it is called procrastination.

As you can see, I am in a vicious cycle right now. My daughter is just out of the shower. I’ll have to talk to you later.

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A Writer’s Block Solution

Why is it that we get all these great ideas when we’re driving our cars down the freeway, or while we’re shopping at the supermarket? Why do we want to write about someone we met at a cocktail party, while we are at the party? Why do we want to tell our kids how to solve their problems, when they are all the way across the country, and don’t want to hear it anyway?

And then we finally get an hour or so  to ourselves and get out that trusty yellow lined pad, or have the computer open in front of us without anyone to disturb us, and our minds go blank. Completely blank! They call it writer’s block. I’ve heard people say they’ve had it for a couple of weeks, some say a couple of months, others admit to half a year. And they don’t know what to do.

I haven’t had writer’s block for a while; I have some things rattling around in my brain right now that seem to want to burst forth. The last story I am aching to write about took shape when I saw a picture posted in Facebook of my grandson and his new girlfriend. You see, my grandson is twenty-one, one heck-of-a-handsome kid who has no clue about all the things he has going for him. He is so shy that one has to drag each and every word that passes over his lips out of him. Of course, with his looks he always did have a circle of cute girls around him, but he didn’t know what that was all about. He was oblivious to their attentions. And then, Voila! One of them got through to him and now he has a genuine, bonafide, girl friend. From her picture in Facebook, she is happens to be very good-looking. Now, wouldn’t it be possible to build a story around that?

While I was writing Becoming Alice, I dug through some old family pictures. There was one of my dad in a white coat standing with other doctors in a hospital ward in the Allgeiner Krankenhaus (General Hospital) in Vienna. His was quite a story as he struggled to get his license to practice medicine in Austria without being a citizen of that coutry.

Or the picture of my mom taken in Riga, Latvia in 1938 looking like she was headed for a death camp. She had just learned that her father had been killed by the Nazis and thought she and the rest of us were headed in the same direction. I picked up another picture and saw mom and dad about fifteen years later. She is decked out in high heals, a felt hat, and a pretty dress with a fox fir wrapped around her shoulders. She’d earned respectability with the hard work she’d put in making a success of her mom-and-pop grocery store.

Each picture I fingered in my hands prompted a story of its own. Look around. Watch some people at the park, on the bus, at the mall, anywhere, and see if you can’t find a story there. I bet you can.

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Writer’s Block

My new year’s resolution is to get back to writing. I mean the serious kind of writing I did when I threw myself into the project of creating Becoming Alice. I didn’t know when I started my memoir that it would take me three years to complete. I didn’t really have any idea about all the happenings I would include in the book, nor did I know when it would end. It just sort of took form as I put one word after another on paper. As soon as I completed one scene, the next one just came into focus and I wrote about it.

I’m not sure what all the so-called experts would think about this haphazard approach, but it worked for me. I think it even enhanced the work because I relived each happening emotionally as I spilled it onto the written page. Some scenes even caused a few drops to run down my cheeks before the last word became legible on my yellow writing pad. My own opinion is that it strengthened my book.

I am ready to get on with my next project. I have several ideas I want to develop but I’ve hit a snag. I have writer’s block. Luckily I think I know why. Spending as much time as I do on my computer still marketing Becoming Alice on the internet, I never have a sizeable chunk of time when I can separate myself from the rest of my life and concentrate on what is in my head. Also, I spend much time on a number of social networking sites.  Very often I contribute a comment or answer a comment with which I may or may not agree. And then there is this blog … which I do like. It is a place where I can share my thoughts and feelings, get feedback, and even connect with interesting, talented people. This takes time. I force myself to blog at least twice a week. That is a couple of hours that I could be writing my next work. And if I cut back on my computer social networking time, which I do daily, there are a few more hours to work with.

I won’t cut back on blogging. But,come New Year’s Eve, watch out. I’ll be back at work on my yellow writing pad.

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